Fallow is an understatement, but it’s still appropriate. It has been a year (plus or minus a few days) since my last post here and I’m getting ready for another vacation. I’m going to Ottawa and Montreal again, going to visit with my sister, planning to do some of the same things, but as a very different person from the one who went on last year’s trip.
I’ve been thinking about coming back here for awhile and it’s hard to know where to begin if I’m going to catch you up a bit. So, I’ll start with a Brief History of the Growingest Year I’ve Had in a Long Time and we’ll see where we end up.
Looking back, there are clues in the last three entries here at RTA that things were about to change. Hints that maybe I didn’t see at the time, shredded bits of fluff that I dropped so I’d be able to find my way back and remember what it was like before…before I knew what it was the before of.
I’m going to be thirty later this year and who knows what the next year will bring? Travelling on my own (even if only a little ways) is something I enjoy and promise myself…but never do because I worry about student loan payments, etc. I don’t want to be in the middle of something I can’t predict in a year or two and wishing I’d gone.
The long and the short of it is that last year’s vacation flipped a switch. I went to the beach, ate onion ring poutine, toured around, got lost, got found, bought clothes, laughed at my late night TV boyfriend, had the best sleep of my life and then I spent a day riding rollercoasters with my sister. I had more fun on my own that week than I’d had in ages, in my life maybe. It was beyond worth it. And then I came home…and suddenly felt like crap again. Kind of like this –
I’ve let myself go. Go so far, I think I’m gone. I can’t really remember who I was before. Can’t remember what the beginning was like, the good times, or any of it. I need to stop this.
I talked about breaking up with food because I wasn’t willing to think about any other kind of break up yet. Or, at least, I wasn’t willing to articulate those thoughts directly.
Sometime after I got back from my trip, and at least a few weeks after my annual trip to the beach, I mentioned to L that I’d been reading a lot lately. I had been hungry for it, I said, and it was great to feel full again. I’d read three lovely books while I was at the beach on the long weekend…two more since then and….what? WHAT?!
People. He couldn’t understand why I bothered going at all if I was going to be antisocial. If all I’d wanted to do was read, why hadn’t I just taken my tent and gone to the nearest provincial park on my own? He kept talking but the warning bell that had been chiming in the background suddenly swelled to a gong. Without even considering the bits and pieces he was letting fly while I thought about all of this…I realized that he just wasn’t ever going to GET me. This was not the relationship I wanted. A bunch of other little things cropped up all at once and the way was suddenly very clear. I ended it. It was as close to mutual as anything like that can be, but in the story of my life — I was the initiator. I made a choice for myself, for my life, for the children I someday hope to have. It sounds a bit melodramatic, I know, but I knew exactly how things were going to turn out because it’s what happened with my parents. I will not go through that again and will do whatever I can to avoid it. I’ll move to Tijuana if I have to.
The clouded, foggy feeling that accompanies this bad relationship…that neutralizes it…keeps me from following through. It closes back in around me as soon as I put my head down to avoid the people who are singing along to “I’m Too Sexy” and the woman who is enjoying her ice cream even though she is (I hope) bigger than I am. Quietly, I drop the movie in the slot and drift through the fog, across the street and into the grocery store.
Honey, I was sad. So incredibly, desperately sad. It had very little to do with L and everything to do with having let go of myself. I struggled to stay afloat until January, did everything I could to conquer my anxiety. I was taking a little pill, right? I couldn’t possibly be depressed if I was taking something for anxiety and depression. But I was suffering. Painfully caught up in a cycle of self-hatred and frustration that snuck up on me. Like moving a train, I told somebody. Turning the engine on a platform, slowly, slowly, slowly. Slow enough, and a person on board might not realize they’d changed directions. I had assimilated all of the anxiety into my ‘normal’ thought process and believed the crap I was telling myself. That I was useless. Stupid. Lazy. Everything I’m really, truly not.
It wasn’t until I found myself sobbing uncontrollably at the back of a friend’s store, crying all through lunch in front of near strangers and wishing I could somehow blow my chest out that I realized something was wrong. Seriously wrong. It was so completely out of character and the worst of it came on so fast that I finally clued in. I called my doctor, called my boss and went home to sit in the bathtub. I changed prescriptions and I was a new woman within a few days. For weeks I couldn’t get over how quiet I felt. Not numb or stoned. Just calm. I spent the next few months getting better, working well and finding myself again…and in April I moved into a new job. Same organization, just something entirely different. And better. I loved the people at my old job, but at the new one I love the people AND the job.
It was a tremendously difficult year but valuable. Holy shit. I’m myself again and I like it.
There’s more to say, but I’ve got to sign off for now. I have to be up at 4:00 a.m. for a 6:15 flight and there is still a little bit of packing to be done.
